Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Adri­an Leonce says he met with mem­bers of the Mal­ick com­mu­ni­ty to ad­dress crime in the area.

His com­ments came yes­ter­day, af­ter the Sixth Av­enue Mal­ick Vil­lage Coun­cil said in a me­dia re­lease on Sun­day that it was par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about the im­pact vi­o­lence is hav­ing on res­i­dents fol­low­ing four mur­ders last week.

The re­lease stat­ed that res­i­dents sought a meet­ing with Leonce but had not been able to sched­ule a date.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his of­fice at the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment in Port-of-Spain, Leonce said he has a great re­la­tion­ship with the vil­lage coun­cil and was tak­en aback by the re­lease.

Asked about crime in the area, Leonce said he met with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who were at odds with each oth­er.

Asked if he was meet­ing with gang­sters, he said, “I can’t say I met with gang­sters be­cause I can’t la­bel any­body to say they are gang­sters. What I can say is that I met with peo­ple who are very un­hap­py with what is go­ing on and have very strong views, and they brought their sug­ges­tions on how things can hap­pen.”

He added that in the Sixth Av­enue area, there is an on­go­ing war be­tween the up­per and low­er parts of the street. Leonce said some be­lieve the em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties are not be­ing even­ly dis­trib­uted, trig­ger­ing the “war.” But for Leonce, there is noth­ing that can jus­ti­fy crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“Peo­ple can’t use ex­cus­es for why they get in­volved in crime. There is no ex­cuse for crime, none what­so­ev­er. Even if I am hun­gry, there is no ex­cuse for crime. At the end of the day, crime is a choice. I be­lieve in the word and the word said by the sweat of your brow you will eat.”

Leonce said there are sev­er­al pro­grammes in his con­stituen­cy to ad­dress un­em­ploy­ment, which some ar­gued was trig­ger­ing the crim­i­nal­i­ty. He added that the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EPOS) was specif­i­cal­ly cre­at­ed to ad­dress de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in the area, along with oth­er na­tion­al pro­grammes.

Some of the pro­grammes of­fered un­der the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice, he said, are done through EPOS with ad­just­ments to meet the spe­cif­ic needs of the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties.

Leonce said to ad­dress crime, not just in his con­stituen­cy but in the East Port-of-Spain area, there must be a holis­tic ap­proach, with each per­son par­tic­i­pat­ing.

He said with the younger pop­u­la­tion get­ting in­volved in crime, par­ents and guardians must in­vest pos­i­tiv­i­ty in the lives of the chil­dren in their care as young as pos­si­ble.